Top US official warns of 'large uptick' in foreign spies targeting tech companies, threatening national securityThe nation's chief counterintelligence officer, Mike Casey, is warning of a "large uptick" in foreign spies trying to secretly"We're not perfect, but I don't want to live in the dystopian version of the ," joked Casey, who as director of the U.S.
Casey said that over the past two years, as U.S. companies began to heed warnings about questionable investments from China, thehas seen a spike in China's use of front companies and other proxies to access start-up companies and then steal their new technologies. That's why Casey's office and the FBI have spent much of the past year not only trying to figure out not how to convince tech companies that the threat is real, but also how to offer suggestions for mitigating it.
During their meetings, one of the researchers, an expert in defense-related analysis, told Casey about a database she and fellow researchers are building that will capture all of the economic espionage cases that have been made public. Casey told ABC News that such a database could be a resource for the FBI and U.S. intelligence communities as they try to warn the private sector about threats from China, Russia and other adversaries.